<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>Amazing New Mexico Sunsets by evanatural</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28787835">Amazing New Mexico Sunsets</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/evanatural/pseuds/evanatural'>evanatural</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Supernatural</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Feelings Realization, M/M, emonatural, i truly believe that if dean ever heard a single fall out boy song ever that he would implode, i wrote this in a single afternoon after emonatural posting on tumblr nonstop for like a week</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-01-20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-01-20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 08:01:37</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,589</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28787835</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/evanatural/pseuds/evanatural</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean and Castiel get stranded in the middle of New Mexico. They're in no rush, and pause to watch the sunset.</p><p>Absolutely 100% not at all in any way based off any LiveJournal posts made by Pete Wentz in the summer of 2005. No sir. Not at all.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Castiel/Dean Winchester</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Amazing New Mexico Sunsets</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>you are legally required to listen to infinity on high while you read this. any song will do.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>The late afternoon sunlight burns Dean’s eyes. It doesn’t help that he’s been awake for almost 24 hours and spent the last 12 of them driving, either. They should’ve been well out of New Mexico already, but… well, this was one of the few corners of America that Dean could stand to better familiarize himself with. Instead, bent over the hood of the Impala in the middle of nowhere and squinting at a worn out roadmap, he’s struggling to hear Sam’s instructions through the fuzz of a poor phone signal.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You’re not too far outside of Sante Fe, it sounds,” Sam says. “If you can get back on the I-40 you should be able to get back in… ten hours.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Dean looks around the countryside in futility for anything resembling the I-40. He sees nothing, which he already knew would happen, because he’d been stuck here for several hours and hadn’t seen anything then, either.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Easier said than done,” he grumbles. “But thanks, Sammy. Might be a bit longer, though, once I figure out where we’re going I’m probably gonna stop for a couple hours and get some shut eye.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Sure thing, see ya later.” They hang up.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Dean stares at the map again, for a few more minutes, just to make sure he didn’t miss something. Nothing comes up. He can barely tell the smaller roads from the creases in the old paper. Whatever. He’s been lost before and made it out just fine. He’ll figure it out.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Alright, Cas,” he says as he folds the map back up and tucks it away into his pocket. “I figured out where we’re going, let’s bounce.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He starts towards the driver’s seat door, but pauses. Castiel hasn’t moved. He’s still leaning on Baby’s hood, watching the sunset.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Cas?” Dean calls again.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It catches the Angel’s attention this time. He turns a little, enough for Dean to see his profile, but his eyes are still focused on the sky.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Apologies,” he says. His voice is calm. “I just always find myself amazed by things like this.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Dean moves away from the door and finds himself leaning on the hood next to Castiel. “No sunsets in Heaven? Chuck sure was slacking.” he jokes.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Castiel rolls his eyes (after all these years, he finally knows that’s a joke, even if his reaction is still stern; not that Dean minds).</span>
</p><p>
  <span> “We had sunsets.” he says. “They were just easily taken for granted.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Dean nods. A silence lulls over them and he looks up at the sky himself.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Dean has never been the type to be impressed by sights like this, nor did he understand why someone would be. To him, a sunset, no matter how pretty, was just a sunset. It would come every night, nothing special. If he wanted to watch it, it didn’t matter what day he did it on. Sunsets were, in Dean’s opinion, mundane. But Dean knew Castiel, and Castiel took pleasure in small, mundane things, things he’d missed out on in his years in Heaven. There was no harm in letting him watch the sunset, and watching it with him, Dean realized that it was a damn pretty one.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The sky could have a painting. The hints of twilight seeping into the furthest sides of the clouds were almost drowned out by the sun’s loud orange and pink dyes. It was bright, but it wasn’t overwhelming. It was peaceful, and it was warm.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Warm enough to dry Dean’s soggy clothes, certainly.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They’d been on a quick, in-and-out case together, at an abandoned waterpark. Some vamps had been using it as a nest. Save for a couple sprinklers and one pool, the place was entirely defunct, not that that stopped Dean from getting tossed into the water at one point. It proved to work in his favor when he took a couple vamps down with him and his flask of holy water mixed in with the water in the pool, but it was a victory that only lasted until he was leaving. Of course he hadn’t thought to bring any spares, so for the whole drive Dean had the discomfort of his clothes sticking to his skin. He had been itching to take a shower, but it seemed like he could wait some more.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Was that your first time at a waterpark?” Dean asks.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yes, it was.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Dean laughs. “I’m sure it was a bit underwhelming. I swear there’s usually more going on.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I gather you’ve been plenty of times before?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“‘Course I have! Been a few years though,” he admits. “Last time was with, uhh... Lisa and Ben actually. Ben had just grown tall enough for one of those drop-down slides and he begged us and begged us to take him, so we all went on his birthday. Lisa was terrified of letting him go on the thing but finally she agreed. I think Ben was scared, too, but I gave him a little pep talk and we did our handshake, and he was fine. Musta gone on the thing ten times after that.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Castiel raises an eyebrow.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I didn’t know you had a handshake.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yeah we did! I swear, we spent half the damn day trying to teach Lisa and she just couldn’t get it,” Dean smiles. He tried miming it out with his own two hands, to no avail. “Here, lemme show you?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Castiel extends his hand and tries his best at mimicking Dean’s own motions.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Up, down, side, si- no, other side!” Dean instructs, laughing as Cas fumbles around. He hardly remembers the handshake himself. They barely make it to the end. “Aaaand --” Dean holds his hand above his head, “-- high five!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Castiel meets his hand with a refreshing </span>
  <em>
    <span>smack</span>
  </em>
  <span>. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“That could’ve gone better,” he admits.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Dean shrugs. “You still did better than the yoga instructor.” Castiel smiles at that. “Yeah… after that we were all exhausted. We put on a movie after dinner but Ben fell asleep halfway through.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What movie?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He thinks for a second, trying to remember. “Spirited Away, I think.” he finally answers. “It was really good, the parts I saw. I… may have fallen asleep, too.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m sure it was a fun day.” Castiel says with a small laugh.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It was,” Dean nods. He repeats it, “it was.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It was. Waterparks with your loved ones are always fun. So are secret handshakes and birthday dinners and cartoon movies. And he had loved them so much, in a way that he wasn’t sure he had felt in a long time. He couldn’t help but feel, though, that his day with Castiel was better than that. Sure, he was dirty, and exhausted, and had spent whatever time he wasn’t in a carseat killing vampires, but thinking about it now, he would choose this over another birthday with Ben and Lisa any day. He couldn’t place why, though…</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Just as he struggled to put his feelings into thoughts, Castiel turns and asks him something.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Do you miss them?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Dean pauses. For a second it seems like Castiel is going to elaborate, but he stays quiet and his eyes stay on Dean, patiently waiting for an answer.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Slowly, Dean gives him one.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yeah. I do.” he says. “Ben was like my kid, and Lisa… I mean, I was in love with her, y’know? Of course I miss them. That life just… wasn’t for me. No matter how much I loved them, I was always a little out of place.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And that -- the difference in belonging -- </span>
  <em>
    <span>that was it</span>
  </em>
  <span>. He didn’t feel out of place at all with Castiel. He sits on it for a moment, before the quiet becomes a little too much for him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It was years ago, though,” Dean deflects. He almost says something like he doesn’t care, that he’s over it. That would be a lie, and too harsh. Instead he says, and he says it with confidence (and a warm smile), “I don’t let myself be upset by it anymore. We’ve all... found better places for ourselves.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Castiel nods. He doesn’t say anything else, just turning back to the sunset. Dean isn’t sure if Castiel understood what he meant, but he doesn’t elaborate. He doesn’t feel the need to. He had said his piece and he was at peace with what he said.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They stay there for a few more minutes and watch the sun finally dip below the horizon. At least, Castiel does. Dean is too focused on Castiel, watching the oranges and pinks that outlined his profile slowly fading into magentas and violets.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>With the final few minutes of daylight, Castiel’s phone starts ringing. Castiel snaps out of it. Dean doesn’t.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It’s Jack,” he explains, nodding to the phone in his hand.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Take it,” Dean nods absentmindedly. “Tell him I said hi.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Castiel answers the call and walks a few feet away. Dean stays on the hood and watches him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The call lasts until the sun is totally gone. While he waits, Dean realizes that a sunset wasn’t mundane like he’d always thought. It was reliable.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Alright, Jack, Dean and I have to start driving again.” Castiel says. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They hang up.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“He wants to do a movie night.” explains Castiel. He’s smiling softly, and then starts going off about what movies he thinks Jack would enjoy (“Star Wars, Star Trek maybe? What about the movie you mentioned earlier, do you think he would like that one?”) as if it’s the most important thing in the world to him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Yeah. Dean is totally back in love.</span>
</p>
  </div></div>
</body>
</html>